Still Life Poem by Keith Gwilliams

I’m looking at a jigsaw with a picture called ‘Still Life’.
I see a rose, violin and bow, some music and some books,
A lighted candle and a quill.

How can that represent ‘Still Life’?
The violin and bow scream out to be played,
Taut strings being forced into a shimmering glissando
Of notes falling on the ear
Like silver drops of water falling from a fountain.

The music demands a voice
Singing out praises to Earth in her glory,
Or tell the story of things that are past, or perhaps to come.

The candle flame brightens and dims, stretches and dips,
Sways and flutters in the invisible breeze
Whose touch is soft and gentle
But has a force which cannot be resisted
Or else it passes you by.

The words of the books move at the bidding
Of an unseen narrator
Lending sight and sound to an unseen silent action.
A history of cause and effect on an object of emotion

The quill displays a vigour that once fought gravity
To remain a master of the sky.
Soaring above the mundane and the flat,
Away from cave and crevice
Up to the heights of clouded peaks
Perhaps at last to land on the pinnacle of achievement
And there to rest awhile – but never still!

Now the rose
An artist’s palette of delicate beauty and harsh thorny reality.
In life it moves, growing, flowering
Stretching to the sun.
In being picked to grace the table
It dies
But even in dying it moves
Leaves drooping, petals wilting – but never still.
And in death – there is no life.

So – an impossibility – ‘Still Life’.
Even the name is a denial of itself.
Stillness defines death.
Life implies a future, an attainable prize,
An approaching horizon, a reachable goal.
May the gods give me life!